Stop over in Naples

statues at the Naples museum
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For our last day in Rome, we decided to travel to Naples and Pompei.  On the way there we decided it would be best to see Naples first because Rick steves really recommended going to the Naples archeological museum because they had most of the art and artifacts found in Pompei at the museum.  So we headed there first, and we found that the Naples transportation is absolutely ridiculous.  There is the train line we came in on.  A metro line, and a circumnavigators line which takes you to sorrento.  When we finally got to the museum we explored as fast as we could because it was already 11am.  We got to go to the secret room, which you had to make an appointment for, but no one checked us at the door.  It had all the erotic and sexual paintings and scuptures from antiquity in one room, that had been locked up and was just reopened in 2000.  It was a pretty amazing room, and Jen recognized some of the paintings from her textbooks.  Even though it wasnt really a secret room anymore, everyone stil had this really hushed feeling about it, and it was quite a funny place to be walking around in a museum.  After the secret room we explored all of the little artifacts and mosaics from Pompei, and tryed to remember as much as possible for our trip later that afternoon.  We then left the museum and made our way to the two recommended pizza places in Naples.  The first one we went to, had a crowd of people outside the restaurant and it took us a while to figure out how to even get a number.  Then we waited around for around 40 minutes, before we gave up and went to the other one.  This place we got seated very quickly, but once again they forgot our order for some reason!  We were not having very good luck.  Finally we got our pizza after we complained, and then realized maybe we shouldnt have done that in naples, but we did get our pizza and it was amazing!  They were huge, and the crust was perfect!  It was the best pizza of our trip so far at a restaurant.  After the restaurant we made our way back to the train station, just in time to miss the train, and had to wait for the next one.  We were already realy late by this point, so we would only have a few hours at pompei but we had to go because that is what we came for.  Once we got on the train, there was a big hurry for everyone to get in, and people were pushing and this poor american family next to us got their wallet stolen.  It was sorta ackward to sit on the train with them as they tried to figure out what to do, because we were right across the seats from them, and they were very upset.

Overall...Naples was a very scary and frightening city.  It reminded Jen of gotham from batman, almost the same exact city.  It was overcrowded, dirty, and dangerous.  So we were much happier when we left there.